20 years ago: Serbia-Montenegro excluded by UN General Assembly (September 22, 1992)

On occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Serbia (former Yugoslavia) being excluded from the United Nations (on September 22, 1992) – and the election of the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vuk Jeremic, to be Chairman of the UN General Assembly – the Secretary General of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), Tilman Zülch, criticizes that:

• the election of Tomislav Nikolic as President and Ivica Dacic as Prime Minister of Serbia has brought close associates of Slobodan Milosevic to power – the person to be held responsible for the destruction of Bosnia, the genocide, the mass expulsions and the mass rapes.
• these leaders will continue the policy of dividing Bosnia-Herzegovina and will try to arrange that the northern part of Bosnia, the so-called Republika Srpska, will be joined with Serbia.
• in this respect, a policy of apartheid exists right in the heart of Europe. Until now, less than five percent of the non-Serb population (Croatian Catholics, Bosnian Muslims and members of smaller nationalities – once about 60 percent of the population) were able to return to the Serb-dominated parts of Bosnia. People who try to return are still discriminated in many ways.

Therefore, the Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the European governments not to give up the multi-ethnic and multi-religious region of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but to continue fighting for the idea of a peaceful coexistence of all ethnic and religious communities. To achieve this, the de-facto divided country Bosnia must be reunited.